Cities of Refuge
Session 7: Lessons From the Exodus
I. Significance of the Exodus:
The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for 430 years until God came to their deliverance through the most supernatural displays of power that any people had ever known. God fought on their behalf and in a matter of weeks crippled the most powerful nation in the Earth at that time and in one night the entire population of some millions walked out from underneath the oppression of their captors and became their own sovereign nation. This isn’t just the most powerful display of God’s power in Israel’s history there are great number of details about this sovereign uprooting and re-planting that are unprecedented in human history. The measure of God’s involvement throughout the process of the Exodus is worthy of a case study and is key to our discussion on cities of refuge for a number of reasons.
A. The Start of a Nation:
From a Jewish perspective this is there may be no single event more important to Israel’s history than God’s supernatural uprooting them as a nation of Israel from their enslavement in Egypt. In many ways this was the start of them as nation people because for the first time they were able to self govern and had the liberties afforded an independent nation. No nation in human history has such a story of supernatural deliverance, provision, protection and divine setting into place.
B. Most Referenced Event:
The Exodus is the most referenced event in the entire Bible. It stands as God’s primary picture of how He relates to His people and provides significant revelation about how He wants us to think about Him (Ex. 12:17, 51, 16:32, 18:1, 20:2, 23:15, 29:46, 32:1, 4, 7, 8, 11, 32:23, 33:1, 34:18; Le. 11:45, 19:36, 22:33, 23:43, 25:38, 25:42, 25:55, 26:13, 45; Nu. 1:1, 9:1, 14:19, 15:41, 20:5, 16, 21:5, 22:5, 11, 23:22, 24:8, 26:4, 32:11 33:1, 33:38; Dt. 1:27, 4:20, 37, 45-46, 5:6, 6:12, 21, 7:8, 8:14, 9:7, 12, 26, 13:5, 10, 16:1, 3, 6, 20:1, 23:4, 24:9, 25:17, 26:8, 29:25; Js. 2:10, 5:4-5, 24:5-6, 17; Jg. 2:1, 12, 6:8, 13, 11:13, 16, 19:30; 1Sa. 8:8, 10:18, 12:6, 8, 15:2, 6; 2Sa. 7:6, 23; 1Ki. 6:1, 8:9, 16, 21, 51, 53, 9:9, 12:28; 2Ki. 17:7, 36, 21:15; 1Ch. 17:5, 21; 2Ch. 5:10, 6:5, 7:22; Ne. 9:18; Ps. 80:8, 81:10, 105:38, 114:1; Is. 11:16; Je. 2:6, 7:22, 25, 11:4, 7, 16:14, 23:7, 26:23, 31:32, 32:21, 34:13, 37:5; Ez. 20:6, 9-10; Da. 9:15; Ho. 2:15, 11:1, 12:9, 13, 13:4; Am. 2:10, 3:1, 9:7; Mi. 6:4, 7:15; Hg. 2:5; Mt. 2:15; Ac. 7:36, 40, He. 3:16, 8:9, 11:22, 27; Ju. 1:5).
C. The Scope of it’s Importance:
By looking at the magnitude of passages on the subject we are able to see the whole picture of what God has done in the past as well as what He intends to do related to the most important event in Israel’s history. The Exodus is made mention of in every major season of Israel’s history by all the major prophets, many of the minor prophets, Jesus and the Apostles as well.
II. Return of the Exodus:
The reason that God has so frequently used the Exodus as a reference point illustrating His heart and relationship to the redeemed is because it has always been His plan to do again. The events and response of God during the first Exodus will unfold again in the last days this time on a global scale as the Church across the Earth looks to the hand of God for deliverance from an end time Pharaoh (Antichrist).
“As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show them my wonders." Nations will see and be ashamed, deprived of all their power. They will lay their hands on their mouths and their ears will become deaf. They will lick dust like a snake, like creatures that crawl on the ground. They will come trembling out of their dens; they will turn in fear to the LORD our God and will be afraid of you (Mi. 7:15-17).”
A. The New Exodus:
The scripture actually prophesies that there is coming a time when the people of Israel won’t be talking about the Exodus anymore; though God has commanded them to remember it as the most important event in their history. The Prophet Jeremiah says that something even more supernatural will occur; the Messiah will come and will deliver the people of Israel and bring them back to permanently dwell in their own land. This second Exodus is the end time move of God; it includes all the events of the Great Tribulation, the seconding coming procession and the glorification of the nation of Israel after Christ is crowned king. At this point it says the people of God will no longer talk about the first Exodus but they will now reference this second Exodus as the most important event in the nation’s history, as will the entire Church.
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior. “So then, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when people will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ Then they will live in their own land (Je. 23:5-8).”
B. Awaiting Fulfillment:
The easiest way to identify whether a Bible prophecy is still a future reality or not is to identify whether what is written has been fulfilled 100% in any occasion in history. The above prophecies are still future because the events and the plagues of Egypt have not been duplicated since the time of Moses.
C. As it was in the Exodus:
This is the story of the last days and we can be confident that God, who strategically used the Exodus as His reference point to prepare His people for what is coming, will interact with the redeemed as He did during those days. God set the scene for the Exodus, it was Him who positioned things just as they were so that He could bring about the greatest measure of glory and show His might in salvation. Where need is the greatest there deliverance will shine the brightest.
D. Changing Our Perspective About the Second Exodus:
If we are not careful when we talk about the second Exodus (the end time redemption of the Church from the wicked Antichrist) we can find ourselves operating in unbelief and a wrong perspective. We often wrongly look back at Moses and God’s leadership during the time that Israel came up out of Egypt and we think of those events as God’s main plan and that this second round is somehow a lesser version than the original.
E. Deliverance Culminating in a Wedding:
The Exodus was just God’s dress rehearsal for the main event; it was His plan from creation to redeem His Bride in the last days and to deliver Her from the wicked oppressor. This was all to set the stage for the return of Christ and His righteous rule on planet Earth where He would be forever wed to His Church. This is the main point on the Father’s mind, this, far more than leading Israel out of slavery, has been on the heart of God from the beginning. The second Exodus will see the Son of God receive His Bride and culminate in the most celebrated day of human history, the wedding of the Lamb.
“Praise our God, all you his servants…I heard what sounded like a great multitude…shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready…Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God (Re. 19:5-9).”
III. The Wonders of the Exodus:
So now that we can begin thinking about the end times in terms of it being a glorious second exodus centered around God’s purposes for His people we want to identify what God did. God plans to do again the same type of things that He did throughout the time period when He brought Israel up out of Egypt. This is a massive statement because of how much that entailed and how long of a period of time that encapsulates. There are many types of “wonders” that God performed during those days and to understand the fullness of what God meant by the term we would have to look at countless passages of scripture. For the sake of brevity I am only going to list a few examples now and we will revisit what we can learn from all this in a later section.
A. Devastating Plagues:
In Exodus chapter three God used the term “wonders” to describe all the plagues that He released against Egypt, but the term had meaning far beyond the judgments merely.
“So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go (Ex. 3:20).”
B. Powerful Miracles:
Psalm 78 is one of the great recap passages bearing testimony of the events of the Exodus. Here we are told that part of the wonders that God performed among the people of God included miracles of many sorts.
“He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan (Ps. 78:12).”
C. Unmistakable Direction:
This same account tells us that God led the people supernaturally; providing such clear direction that it would have been unmistakable as to what God wanted them to do.
“He divided the sea and led them through; he made the water stand firm like a wall. He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night (Ps. 78:13-14).”
D. Supernatural Provision:
In the midst of Him leading them He provided for them in the most unheard of ways imaginable in order to sustain them along the very difficult route that He led them.
“He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas; he brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers (Ps. 78:15-16).”
E. Unprecedented Supernatural Protection:
The Israelites in the land of Goshen were protected during the judgment events in an unprecedented way. When we marvel at these daily and regional wonders we can don’t have anything to compare it to; we call this phenomenon the Goshen Principle. Because this is the most central point to our subject of God creating pockets of mercy in the last days we will spend the entire next couple of sections looking at the way this looked during Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.
IV. A Case Study of the Land of Goshen:
Part of the wonder of Goshen was the miraculous exclusion of the people of God and the land itself from the judgments that were plaguing the rest of nation of Egypt, as well as those non-Jews living there. We can see from the Exodus and many other scriptures that it is God’s plan to provide the saints with divine protection/provision in the midst of the judgments during the Great Tribulation (Ge. 7:1-5, 19:15-17; Ex. 8:22-23, 9:4-6, 26, 10:23, 11:7, 15:26; 2Ch. 15:6-7; Ps. 91:6-7, 14-15, 121:1-8; Is. 26:20-21, 33:17, 43:2; Ez. 9:4-6, 14:18, 20, 18:21, 24, 33:19; Ma. 3:17-18; Da. 11:34-35, 12:10; Na. 1:7; Mi. 7:14-20; Zph. 2:3; 2Pe. 2:9; Mk. 16:17-18; Re. 2:23-25, 3:10, 7:3, 9:4, 16:2).
A. No Swarms of Flies were in Their Land:
God sent countless millions of flies as an infestation into the whole of Egypt but none of them entered into the borders of Goshen.
“But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the LORD, am in this land. I will make a distinction between my people and your people. This miraculous sign will occur tomorrow (Ex. 8:22-23).”
B. None of Their Animals Died:
God released a plague that was aimed at the Egyptian livestock and all of the however many millions of animals belonging to them died but not a single one of those that belonged to the Israelites were affected.
“But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.' " The LORD set a time and said, "Tomorrow the LORD will do this in the land." And the next day the LORD did it: All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died. Pharaoh sent men to investigate and found that not even one of the animals of the Israelites had died. Yet his heart was unyielding and he would not let the people go (Ex. 9:4-7).”
C. The Only Place it Didn’t Hail:
God brought the worst storm that had every come to the land of Egypt, which caused unparalleled devastation all across the nation but in Goshen where the Israelites lived there was no hail and no damage.
“hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields—both men and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were (Ex. 9:24-26).”
D. Light Where They Lived:
God sent a darkness across the land; one that the affects of it’s presence could be felt. It enveloped the entire nation accept Goshen and all the places where they lived.
“Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt—darkness that can be felt." So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived (Ex. 10:21-23).”